Beverly Center Acts to Curb Rat Invasion

A horde of hungry rats apparently left homeless by nearby construction projects has invaded the $100-million Beverly Center, prompting managers of the upscale Westside shopping mall to sign an emergency contract to eradicate the pests.

Los Angeles County health inspectors in the last two months have found rat droppings throughout the massive 900,000-square-foot structure at Beverly and La Cienega boulevards, home to some of the city’s most fashionable shops and restaurants.

Evidence of the rat infestation was uncovered in at least 20 of the mall’s 27 food establishments, a health official said Monday.

Nine restaurants that failed to move quickly to attack the problem have been referred to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office for possible criminal prosecution, said Carl B. Charles, an environmental health manager for the county Department of Health Services. Charles refused to identify the affected restaurants.

“It’s serious enough that we want to nip it in the bud,” said Charles H. McMullin, who supervises the health department’s Hollywood-Wilshire field office. “If we don’t knock it out, they could just take the place over, and we don’t want that.”

To halt the invasion, the mall’s owner, La Cienega Associates, stepped in last week and signed a contract with a major institutional exterminating company, said Lawrence R. Beerman, the Beverly Center’s general manager.

The exterminator, Bugs Burger Bug Killers of Miami, plans an extensive program of trapping and baiting throughout the structure, which covers more than eight acres, Beerman and health officials said.

“They tell us that after two to four weeks, they will be eliminated,” Beerman said. “After that, it’s really a matter of routine maintenance to make sure they don’t come back.”

Normally, Beerman said, vendors are responsible for their own pest control.

However, the Beverly Center’s unusual design has allowed rats displaced by nearby construction projects--including the 311-room Ma Maison luxury hotel and restaurant complex-- to easily invade the mall.

The design also allows rats to move from one food establishment to another, said the health department’s McMullin, frustrating attempts to deal with the problem one restaurant at a time.

The mall’s three shopping floors are perched atop a five-story parking garage, which includes restaurants and other businesses on the first floor. At more conventional malls, McMullin noted, the parking structure and trash pick-up points are usually segregated from the rest of the building.

“The way the (Beverly) center was built, it’s like the old arcade-type shopping center, where you have the open space and open corridors to outside air,” McMullin said. As a result, “there’s just no way to consider the Beverly Center rodent proof. There are just too many ways for (rats) to get in there.

“It’s totally impossible to say just how many (rats) might be there,” he added. “You don’t see them, you just see the droppings, so it’s a wild guess.”

However, McMullin said droppings and rub marks--the greasy residue left behind by migrating rodents--have been found in eating establishments on both the first and eighth floors and in service hallways and in common areas where garbage is collected and stored.

It appears that rats, which are usually active only after hours, may have entered some restaurants through the same entrances used by patrons during the day, McMullin added.

“You know the point where a rat is eating because when they are eating, it goes in one end and comes out the other,” McMullin added. “Our concern right now is the possibility of adulterating foodstuffs with their feces or urine.”

Charles of the county health department said that identifying the food vendors who were cited by health department inspectors would be unfair.

Lack of a citation, Charles said, does not mean that a restaurant is rat-free.

Can Migrate

“The structure of the building is such that rodents can migrate from one establishment to another. . . . Because of this accessibility, it probably would not be fair to say one had it and one did not,” he said.

In addition, Charles said, the identities of the vendors referred to the city attorney’s office cannot be made public because they are the subject of a possible criminal investigation. A spokesman for the city attorney’s office also refused to disclose the names.

Evidence of two kinds of rats--the roof variety and the Norway, or sewer rat--has been spotted in the mall, McMullin said. The roof rat is grayish brown, weighs less than a pound and is about a foot long, from head to tail. It generally feeds on fruits and vegetables.

The Norway rat, which feeds in ground burrows, sewers and industrial areas, is larger and meaner, said Frank Hall, who heads the county’s vector control program.

“He’s a lot dirtier. The roof rat is a nicer kind of rodent,” he said.